Monday Midday Links: Sony Drops eBook Reader Prices

Bonds of Justice by Nalini Singh is available at Kobo Books for $5.49. I’m not sure how they are discounting it and no one else is but who am I to question a decent price for a much desired book?

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To celebrate the release of MOUSE AND DRAGON, their thirteenth Liaden Universe novel, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller are holding a contest for readers and bloggers.

The contest is geared to attract readers who have yet to read a Liaden novel. They can enter for a chance to win an ebook edition of The Dragon Variation, an omnibus that includes the novels CONFLICT OF HONORS, LOCAL CUSTOM, and SCOUT'S PROGRESS. 36 winners will be picked.

Sharon Lee & Steve Miller are the author team behind the classic and ever-popular Liaden Universe ®. This series of "adventurous romantic space opera" holds cross-over appeal for both romance and science fiction readers.

In celebration of the publication of Mouse and Dragon, the thirteenth novel set in their Liaden Universe ®, authors Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are holding an Expanding Universe Contest! Yes! No less than thirty-six electronic copies of The Dragon Variation will be given away.

The Dragon Variation is an omnibus edition of three Liaden Universe ® novels -‘ Conflict of Honors, one of the first modern SFRomances; Local Custom, second place winner of the Prism Award for best Futuristic of 2002; and Scout's Progress, the first place winner of the Prism Award for best Futuristic of 2002, Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice for Best SF Novel of its year, and the prequel to Mouse and Dragon.

That’s three complete novels under one cover. No prior knowledge of the Liaden Universe ® required. Electronic! In Baen Books' DRM-free, multiplatform style. This omnibus can be read on your Kindle, your phone, your iPad, your desktop, or other ereader.

To enter the contest, visit Sharon Lee's blog and follow the instructions you see there (it's easy). Winners will be announced on Saturday, July 17, 2010.

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When many news sites are closing off access with pay walls and registration walls, Guardian UK is going the complete opposite direction. It has developed a wordpress plugin that will allow bloggers to embed searches and entire articles from the Guardian on their blog.

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Sydney Morning Herald reviewed the BeBook Neo. The advantages of the Neo over the Kindle, say Adam Turner, is the built in wifi, a web browser and ability to download eBooks via the web. It also supports un encrypted MOBI and DRM protected ePub and PDF. The Neo also has tablet technology which allows you to take notes on the screen much like the Sony Touch.

The disadvantages is that it is double the cost of the Kindle and triple the cost of the Kobo and downloading ebooks from the web is cumbersome.

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Sony has dropped the prices of its devices in response to the BN and Kindle price drops. The Pocket is $150, the Touch is $170 and the Daily Edition is $300.

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She self publishes NA and contemporaries (and publishes with Berkley and Montlake) and spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.

I recently bought a BeBook Neo and I’m very happy with it. As I live outside the US, the price difference wasn’t that dramatic. Plus I figured that if I was going to be limited by geographical restrictions, I didn’t want to be limited to purchasing my ebooks exclusively at Amazon.

The BeBook Neo is the same device as the Onyx Boox 60 (6″ screen).

The pros: no glare; wide choice of formats; WIFI; the touchscreen rocks; very fast pageturn; extremely easy to use; option to make notes; doesn’t limit user to any particular ebook store.

The cons: the price (probably not the cheapest option for people in the US, although the prices at the Onyx Boox site might be more dollar-friendly); WIFI connection is slow – I’d only use it instead of laptop if I were travelling; the battery life is not bad but it’s definitely NOT the 7,000 pageturns promised on their website; the black leather cover I bought with it is gorgeous, but it really should be included in the base price as I consider it an essential item rather than an optional accessory.

I’m so glad I haven’t gotten an ereader yet. The price war and resulting drops are exactly what I was waiting for. I’m going to wait until the fall for holiday deals, but I think this might finally be the year I get an ereader!

I entered the Expanding Universe contest. I’d never heard of the series before I read this post. I love SFR, so it’s certainly worth a shot.

Thanks so much for the tip on Kobo having Bonds of Justice discounted. I’ve been wanting to buy it, but I’m trying to restrict new book buying until I use up my Fictionwise micropay balance, which is not easy these days. It would be silly not to buy it at that discount though, right? Total justification…Kobo, here I come!

Jane @10 – don’t be intimidated by the number of books in the Liaden universe: they tend to go in groups of 3 or so that are connected, and then only loosely connected to other sub-series (rather like the Pratchett books have sub-series). Liaden books are really great! Wish I could afford them all in e-format for my new Kindle.

@Jane, thank you! For some reason, I didn’t realize Kelly Hunter’s Red-Hot Renegade was going to be out so soon. I read Untameable Rogue and really wanted to read Jacob’s story. I just went to Mills & Boon and downloaded it. I LOVE technology…

That price drop sounded quite nice… but for the moment, the European stores seem to be offering the old price. I am waiting to see if the price drop applies to European stores or not before ordering.
Any one has any information about it?

@sao: ?? What are you talking about regarding the “Liaden Universe copyright symbol”? Admittedly I own all the books in print, but I don’t remember them having an off-putting copyright notice…

*feelings of having overlooked something*

*has read the post again* oh, you mean the registered trademark bit? I wouldn’t be surprised if its because a good lot of small publishers died on Lee & Miller and they self-published the books for so long in between getting picked up by genre specialist BAEN again. They even published other out of print authors: They’re SRM Publishing.

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